Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 39, Number 86, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 July 1907 — Liquor Licenses Legal. [ARTICLE]

Liquor Licenses Legal.

The Indiana Supreme Court Rules Against Judges Artman and Christian. The supreme court Tuesday reversed the “Sopher case” in which Jii'ige Ira Christian, of Noblesville, held that all the liquor license lans of Indiana were unconstitutional and that a saloon was a nuisance per ee. ' After reciting the charge that Sopher kept a place for the sale of int oxicating liquors at retail without stating that it was disorderly or otherwise improperly conducted and that the court excluded all evi dence tending to show tnatSopher’s saloon was operated under a county license, Judge Jordan said, in d ciding the case: “In fact, this prosecution may be said to proceed on the theory that the sale alone of intoxicating liquors at retail in a room or place kept for that purpose, such liquors to be as a beverage on the premises where sold, constitutes a public nuisanee per se under and within the contemplation of section 534 of an act of the legislature concerning public offenses, approved March 19,1905 (Acts 1905, page 584, Section 2179, Burn’s Annotated Statuses, 1905). That this is the theory of counsel for the state is by the Litter conceded.

“The section in que-tion reads: Every person who shall erect, or continue and maintain any pulic nuisance, to the injury of any part of the citizens of this state, shall on conviction, be fined, not exceeding ona hundred dollars.’ This provision has formed a part of the criminal law of this state for over sixty years. “The common law, together with acts "passed by the pavlia meat in aid thereof, prior to the fourth year of the reign of James I, is, by adoption, in force aud pre vails in this state, so far as applic able and when not inconsistent with the acts of our fundamental laws, tate or federal, and not inconsisteut with the acts of our own legislate or statutes enacted by congr ss. “It will be observed that there is no or allegation in the affi davit in tnl<» case to show that the room or place therein they were sold and drunk w?s disorderly or that such place or was in any manner conducted and maintained in violation of law. “In Bishop on Statutory Crimes, third edition, Section 984, 985, it is said: Tt is at common law lawTil to keep a properly regulated inD, alehouse or tippling house, which severally are indictable only when disorderly.’ Hence, a fortiori, the simple selling of intoxicating drinks is not a common law crime, but from an early period in English legislation during anti-colonial times and thence downward to the present day with us, statutes, in various forms of provisions, have been enacted as aids to the suppres sion of enormous evils which the use or abuse of inebriating liquors has wrought. Indeed, the old English enactments of this sort are numerous and they have largely been the models for legislation in our states.’

“In passing, it may be said that if tippling houses, wherein intoxicating liquors were sold to be drank as a beverage, were already unlawful under the common law, it would seem strange, under the circumstances, that the English parliament should have interposed and enacted a statute making such houses unlawful and subjecting the business to certain restrictions and regulations. “As the authorities show, neither the sale of intoxicating liquors nor the keeping and maintaining in an orderly manner of tippling houses, •r other houses wherein such liquors were sold to be used as a beverage, constituted a public offense or a public nuisance at oommon law.